Looking Back

January 25, 2008

I’ve been writing for a long time. This blog is a baby in the grand scheme of my time spent crafting words. I looked back today and put up some of my favorite historical vignettes… Here are two links with excerpts from each.

…The lesson is to move beyond that suffering and come together. You have never felt so alone and so together as you did on the boiling blacktop of an August training day.

In a shared madness we ran in heat and rain, up hills and through trails, over gnarled roots and across the brick red of a gravel track. In circles under the close watch of the stopwatch and up hills as he waited at the top, calling out encouragement from the window of an old VW van…

Moments of Euphoria – Written at the end of my one-year forced hiatus from the world of meaningful physical activity… just before my doctor was about to release me back out into the wild.

…My moments of euphoria mostly come when I am doubled over, hands on both knees, gasping. Lack of oxygen sharpening colors around me. Sharpening some edges and blurring others. The world at a slight tilt. The angle wide.

Fully aware of the heart inside my chest. Organs no longer just abstract concepts but actual throbbing entities, pounding on the outside of me with both fists. Lungs that scream silently and made the greatest noise. Internal fire and roaring. A great chaos underneath my skin.